Inside of new Severance Hospital in Shinchon, western Seoul

3rd-party certification motivates workers and raises competency at new hospital

By Park Jin-kyung and Choi Sun-mee

Background

“No one puts new wine into old wineskins, or else the new wine will burst the skins, and it will be spilled, and the skins will be destroyed.” At the dedication ceremony of the new hospital building on May 4, 2005, Ji Hoon-sang, president of Severance Hospital, cited this Bible verse while urging his faculty and staff to join his efforts to enhance the hospital’s service quality to match the quality of the new building.

With the domestic medical market opening up soon to the global competitors, it was imperative for Severance to prepare itself for the fierce competition against globally leading hospitals and further to build capabilities to successfully reach out to the global markets. With the completion of the world-class hospital facility, the next task was to enhance the quality of its services and operations to global standards.

The leadership at Severance concluded that obtaining certification by the globally acknowledged accreditation and certification organization JCI (Joint Commission International) was an ideal first step in this endeavor. This certification could also help Severance gain the trust of global customers in the quality of its health care.



Improvement efforts

Severance Hospital is one of the largest and leading hospitals in Korea, evolved from Kwanghewon, the first general hospital in Korea founded by Horace Allen, a missionary to Korea, in 1885. In order to improve its health care service quality to meet fast changing customer expectations, It established a quality assurance team in March 1995. As a result of various and continuous quality improvement efforts, it was bestowed with various awards such as the Korea Management Innovation Award by the Korea Management Association in 1991 and The Most Improved NCSI (National Customer Satisfaction Index) Award in 2003 and 2006, and was ranked the number-two hospital in NCSI in 2006 and 2007.

JCI (Joint Commission International)

JCI is the international division of JCR (Joint Commission Resources), which is a part of The Joint Commission, which was founded in 1910 as a not-for-profit organization to accredit and certify health care organizations and programs in the United States. JCI’s objective is to provide expertise and tested solutions for every aspect of quality and patient safety improvement. JCI has been working with health care organizations, ministries of health and global organizations in over 80 countries since 1994.

JCI standards consist of seven patient-centered platforms and 13 health care organization management manuals. JCI awards a certification only when at least 197 out of 323 specific standards are satisfied. JCI accreditation and certification has been most valued and looked for by health care customers in the U.S.

Accomplishments through process of certification

Since the decision to try for the JCI certification was made in July 2005, Severance had to undergo a three-phase evaluation process until finally being certified in April 2007. In order to make all the necessary corrections and improvements requested by JCI, Severance went through a massive process of documenting internal policies, educating and training faculty and staff through numerous seminars and workshops, and continuously communicating to all stakeholders the goal and strategies of this JCI initiative. President Ji reflects that it would have been impossible to obtain the certification without his 6,000 faculty and staff taking ownership of the process and actively participating in the process.

As a result of the quality improvement efforts through the JCI certification process, the hospital was able to drastically reduce infection ratio and medical incidents, establish international standard critical pathway of treatments, improve medical records practice, and considerably enhance the overall safety of the facilities and environments. In summary, Severance was able to meet the international standards in patient care and treatments.

Remaining challenges ahead

With the JCI certification backing up the quality of health care services, the next step for Severance is to confidently reach out to the global markets. In order to attract global patients against other leading health care providers, it has to formulate winning strategies, form and strengthen a network of global marketing and operational partners, and establish global agencies. Maintaining the quality of patient care in order to keep the JCI certification is another challenge.


Park Jin-kyung, left, is a registered nurse and acting assistant manager at Yonsei University Severance Hospital. Choi Sun-mee is a professor of service operations at the School of Business at Yonsei University.